EVANGELICALS, POPE BENEDICT, AND THE FINANCIAL CRISIS

Abstract

Evangelicals at a recent conference responded to Pope Benedict's encyclical Caritas in Veritate, finding common ground on the theological framing of economics; the Christological and Trinitarian grounding of anthropology and communion; the extension of the notion of a restored imago dei into an understanding of development as vocation; and the renewal of civil society's varied institutions. But participants found Caritas in Veritate’s responses to the financial crisis lacking. Evangelical critiques of the encyclical also concerned the relative inattention to the particularities of Scripture and the apparently unqualified enthusiasm for globalization and explicit endorsement of a world political authority.